


last of the real ones

by papersign



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Feels, Gen, Light Angst, and written after rewatching TWS, written pre-IW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-19 22:08:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22071742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papersign/pseuds/papersign
Summary: Once lost, then found. Lost and found and lost again, found again, saved by the man he was always saving.
Kudos: 2





	last of the real ones

A hesitation. The Asset does not hesitate. He acts, he executes — orders, as well as people — and he returns, reciting mission reports like scripture and slipping into cryofreeze like a bastardized baptism, the cold the only thing he welcomes. There is peace in suspension. When he is wiped, there is pain — agony, bone-deep, acute, his mouth tight around the disgusting rubber mouth guard they give him. An act of kindness, he can presume; if he remembered how to laugh, he might at the mere notion that giving him something to protect his teeth was one of kindness. It’s merely to keep his jaw from breaking. 

The hesitation.

“Bucky?”

He is the Asset. He is made for war and made for death, unflappable, a perfect killing machine. But that word, the title, the blue eyes wide and suddenly — I know this man — the Asset locks his jaw, shifts to the balls of his feet, eyes hard; he is vacant, perfect. 

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

He cannot shake it. 

He saves the man from the Potomac, and he returns, drenched and imperfect. He, for the first time, cannot tell his handlers he has completed his mission. 

Getting wiped, for once, is a blessing. 

Budapest allows him to regain himself. The Asset remains — he, it, stays, a voice in his head, a nagging reminder of his imperfections — but Bucky, piece by piece, emerges. He steals a journal, (he has no money, he tells himself, and paper is hard to find) and he feels guilt. He relishes in the emotion, lets it squeeze his chest and twist his stomach. It is so human. 

Memories come after nightmares that leave him sweating and anxious. He writes what he can remember and forgets the rest. He thinks of the man. Steve. 

Memories; peaches in the summer, sitting in the sun, juice running down their chins, their hands; long nights, cold apartments — Steve, smaller, sicker, curled tight against his chest, sleeping fitfully, skin hot and damp with sweat; bottles of hydrogen peroxide, tossed one after another into trash cans, sitting atop used gauze and bandages; cold metal slipping from his fingertips, the unforgiving nature of snow, hard below his back. 

Once lost, then found. Lost and found and lost again, found again, saved by the man he was always saving. Debts he cannot repay, though he’ll damn well try. 

A punishment — it’s bittersweet. They fight like each other’s shadows, going up against Stark. The loss of his arm, body beaten and bruised, pain sharp in his body and with it, clarity. He’d do anything for Steve, but he knows that this battle, this war, hurts him; and he cannot abandon Steve, he won’t, and when they limp out, he pretends not to see the tears in his best friend’s eyes.

Cryo, this time, is a choice. He sees the hurt in those pretty blues, but he knows this is for the best. A reset, a rebirth. A second, a third, chance at being who he used to be. When he wakes up, Steve isn’t there, but Shuri — someone who makes him remember, though faintly, his sister — is, teaching him with more grace and wisdom than he thinks a sixteen year old should be allowed to have. 

He keeps the arm off. There is a learning curve that comes having one hand, but the challenge is welcome. He has to relearn how to live, how to balance without the metal against his side, but he has good teachers — Oyoke, T’Challa, Nakia, Shuri — who push him, who make him think and work and struggle. He finds companionship with the children, souls far more innocent than his own, but ones that only judge him for the messiness of his bun or the skewed angle of his wrap. Wakanda is refreshing. 

He sees Steve again, and his heart soars. The new vibranium arm catches his attention, but he asks, in classic Steve fashion, “How’re you doin’, Buck?” (that little punk from Brooklyn is still there, slipping through the cracks, evident in that smile, stupid and broad), and he replies, “Pretty good,” a smile tugging at his lips, more natural than it’s been in decades, “for the end of the world.”

**Author's Note:**

> a drabble I wrote two years ago on my phone because I was really in my feels


End file.
